From Jesus to Christ

Schmidt Number: S-2450

On-line since: 15th January 2007

LECTURE
III

We
must now turn our attention to the relation between ordinary
religious consciousness and the knowledge that can be gained through
higher clairvoyant powers concerning the higher worlds in general,
and in particular — this is specially relevant to our theme —
concerning the relation of Christ Jesus to these higher worlds.

It will be clear to
you all that the evolution of Christianity so far has been such that
most persons have not been able to attain through their own
clairvoyant knowledge to the mysteries of the Christ-Event. It must
be granted that Christianity has entered into the hearts of countless
human beings, and to a certain degree its essential nature has been
recognised by countless souls; but these hearts and souls have not
been able to look up to the higher worlds and so to receive
clairvoyant vision of what really took place in human evolution
through the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it.
Hence the knowledge that can be gained through clairvoyant
consciousness itself, or through a person having accepted on one or
other ground the communications of the seer concerning the mysteries
of Christianity, must be carefully distinguished from the religious
inclination to Christ and the intellectual leanings towards Him of a
person who knows nothing of clairvoyant investigation.

Now you will all
agree that during the centuries since the Mystery of Golgotha there
have been men of all degrees of intellectual culture who have
accepted the mysteries of Christianity in a deep inner way, and from
what has been said lately in various lectures you will have felt that
this is quite natural, for — as has been emphasised again and
again — it is only in the twentieth century that a renewal of
the Christ-Event will take place, for this is when a certain general
heightening of human powers of cognition begins. It brings with it
the possibility that in the course of the next 3,000 years, and
without special clairvoyant preparation, more and more persons will
be able to attain a direct vision of Christ Jesus.

This has never
happened before. Until now there have been only two — or later
on today we may perhaps discover three — sources of knowledge
concerning the Christian mysteries for persons who could not rise by
training to clairvoyant observation. One source was the Gospels and
all that comes from the communications in the Gospels, or in the
traditions connected with them. The second source of knowledge arose
because there have always been clairvoyant individuals who could see
into the higher worlds, and through their own knowledge brought down
the facts of the Christ-Event. Other persons followed these
individuals, receiving from them a ‘never-ending Gospel’,
which could continually come into the world through those who were
clairvoyant. These two seem at first to be the only two sources in
the evolution of Christian humanity up to the present time. And, now
from the twentieth century onwards, a third begins. It arises because
for more and more people an extension, an enhancement, of their
cognitional powers, not brought about through meditation,
concentration and other exercises will occur. As we have often said,
more and more persons will be able to renew for themselves the
experience of Paul on the road to Damascus. Hence we can say of the
ensuing period that it will provide a direct means of perceiving the
significance and the Being of Christ Jesus.

Now the first
question that will naturally occur to you is this: What is the
essential difference between the clairvoyant vision of Christ which
has always been possible as a result of the esoteric development
described yesterday, and the vision of Christ which will come to
people, without esoteric development, in the next 3,000 years,
beginning from our twentieth century?

There is certainly
an important difference. And it would be false to believe that what
the seer through his clairvoyant development sees today in the higher
worlds concerning the Christ-Event, and what has been seen
clairvoyantly concerning the Christ-Event since the Mystery of
Golgotha, is exactly the same as the vision which will come to an
ever greater and greater number of people. These are two quite
different things. As to how far they differ, we must ask clairvoyant
research how it is that from the twentieth century onwards Christ
Jesus will enter more and more into the ordinary consciousness of
men. The reason is as follows.

Just as on the
physical plane in Palestine, at the beginning of our era, an event
occurred in which the most important part was taken by Christ Himself
— an event which has its significance for the whole of humanity
— so in the course of the twentieth century, towards the end of
the twentieth century, a significant event will again take place, not
in the physical world, but in the world we usually call the world of
the etheric. And this event will have as fundamental a significance
for the evolution of humanity as the event of Palestine had at the
beginning of our era. Just as we must say that for Christ Himself the
event of Golgotha had a significance that with this very event a God
died, a God overcame death — we will speak later concerning the
way this is to be understood; the deed had not happened before and it
is an accomplished fact which will not happen again — so an
event of profound significance will take place in the etheric world.
And the occurrence of this event, an event connected with the Christ
Himself, will make it possible for men to learn to see the Christ, to
look upon Him.

What is this event?
It consists in the fact that a certain office in the Cosmos,
connected with the evolution of humanity in the twentieth century,
passes over in a heightened form to the Christ. Occult clairvoyant
research tells us that in our epoch Christ becomes the Lord of Karma
for human evolution. This event marks the beginning of something that
we find intimated also in the New Testament: He will come again to
separate, or to bring about the crisis for, the living and the dead.
(Acts X:42 — To
testify that He is the one ordained by God to be Judge of the living
and dead. II Timothy IV:1 — Christ Jesus who is to judge the
living and the dead.) Only, according to occult
research, this is not to be understood as though it were a single
event for all time which takes place on the physical plane. It is
connected with the whole future evolution of humanity. And whereas
Christianity and Christian evolution were hitherto a kind of
preparation, we now have the significant fact that Christ becomes the
Lord of Karma, so that in the future it will rest with Him to decide
what our karmic account is, how our credit and debit in life are
related.

This has been common knowledge in Western occultism for
many centuries, and is denied by no occultist who knows these things.
But recently it has been verified again with the utmost care, by
every means available to occult research. We will now enter more
exactly into these matters.

Ask all those who know something of the truth about
these things, and you will find everywhere one fact confirmed, but a
fact which only at this present stage in the development of our
Movement could be made known. Everything which can make our minds
receptive towards such a fact had first to be gathered together. You
can find in occult literature information concerning these matters if
you wish to search for it. However, I shall take no account of the
literature; I shall only bring forward the corresponding facts.

When certain
conditions are described, including those I have dealt with myself, a
picture has to be given of the world a man enters on passing through
the gate of death. Now there are a great many men, especially those
who have gone through the development of Western civilisation —
these things are not the same for all peoples — who experience
a quite definite event in the moment following the separation of the
etheric body after death. We know that on passing through the gate of
death we separate ourselves from the physical body. The individual is
at first still connected for a time with his etheric body, but
afterwards lie separates his astral body and also his Ego from the
etheric body. We know that he takes with him an extract of his
etheric body; we know also that the main part of the etheric body
goes another way; generally it becomes part of the cosmic ether,
either dissolving completely — this happens only under
imperfect conditions — or continuing to work on as an enduring
active form. When the individual has stripped off his etheric body he
passes over into the Kamaloka region for the period of purification
in the soul-world. Before this, however, he undergoes a quite special
experience which has not previously been mentioned, because, as I
said, the time was not ripe for it. Now, however, these things will
be fully accepted by all who are qualified to judge them.

Before entering
Kamaloka, the individual experiences a meeting with a quite definite
Being who presents him with his karmic account. And this Being, who
stood there as a kind of bookkeeper for the karmic Powers, had for
many men the form of Moses. Hence the mediaeval formula which
originated in Rosicrucianism: Moses presents man in the hour of death
— the phrase is not quite accurate, but that is immaterial here
— Moses presents man in the hour of his death with the record
of his sins, and at the same time points to the ‘stern law’.
Thus the man can recognise how he has departed from this stern law
which he ought to have followed.

In the course of our
time — and this is the significant point — this office
passes over to Christ Jesus, and man will ever more and more meet
Christ Jesus as his Judge, his karmic Judge. That is the
super-sensible event. Just as on the physical plane, at the beginning
of our era, the event of Palestine took place, so in our time the
office of Karmic Judge passes over to Christ Jesus in the higher
world next to our own. This event works into the physical world, on
the physical plane, in such a way that men will develop towards it
the feeling that by all their actions they will be causing something
for which they will be accountable to the judgment of Christ. This
feeling, now appearing quite naturally in the course of human
development, will be transformed so that it permeates the soul with a
light which little by little will shine out from the individual
himself, and will illuminate the form of Christ in the etheric world.
And the more this feeling is developed — a feeling that will
have stronger significance than the abstract conscience — the
more will the etheric Form of Christ be visible in the coming
centuries. We shall have to characterise this fact more exactly in
the next few days, and we shall then see that a quite new event has
come to pass, an event which works into the Christ-development of
humanity.

With regard to the
evolution of Christianity on the physical plane, let us now ask
whether for the non-clairvoyant consciousness there was not also a
third way, over against the two already given. Such a third way was
in fact always there, for all Christian evolution. It had to be
there. The objective evolution of humanity is not directed in
accordance with the opinions of men, but in accordance with objective
facts.

Concerning Christ
Jesus there have been many opinions in the course of the centuries,
or the Councils and Church assemblies and theologians would not have
disputed so much among themselves; and in no period, perhaps, have so
many people held various views of the Christ as in our own. Facts,
however, are not determined by human opinions, but by the forces
actually present in human evolution. These facts could be recognised
by many more people simply through noticing what the Gospels have to
say, if people had the patience and perseverance to look at things
really without prejudice, and if they were not too quick and biased
in considering the objective facts. Most people, however, do not want
to form a picture of Christ according to the facts, but one that
suits their own likings and represents their own ideal. And it must
be said that in a certain respect Theosophists of all shades of
opinion do this very thing today. When, for example, certain highly
developed individuals who have attained an advanced stage of human
evolution are spoken of in theosophical literature as Masters, or
Adepts, this is a truth that cannot be disputed by anyone who knows
the facts. It applies to individuals who have had many incarnations;
through exercises and holy life they have pressed on in advance of
mankind and have acquired powers which the rest of humanity will
acquire only in the future. It is natural and right that a student of
Theosophy who has acquired some knowledge concerning the Masters, the
Adepts, should feel the highest respect for such lofty individuals.
If we go on to contemplate so sublime a life as that of Buddha, we
must agree that Buddha should be looked on as one of the highest
Adepts. And we shall then be able to gain through our minds and
feelings an inward relationship to such a person.

Now because the
Theosophist approaches the figure of Christ Jesus on the ground of
this theosophical knowledge and feeling, he will naturally feel a
certain need — and a very comprehensible need — to
connect with his Christ Jesus the same concept he has formed of a
Master, of an Adept, perhaps of Buddha; and he may be impelled to
say: ‘Jesus of Nazareth must be thought of as a great Adept!’
This preconceived opinion would turn upside down any knowledge of the
real nature of Christ. And it would be no more than a preconceived
opinion only prejudice, although an understandable one. How shall
someone who has won the deepest, most intimate relationship to the
Christ not place the bearer of the Christ-Being in the same rank as
the Master, the Adept, or the Buddha? Why should he not? This must
seem to us quite comprehensible. Perhaps to such a person it would
seem like a depreciation of Jesus of Nazareth if we were not to do
so. But by applying this concept to Jesus of Nazareth we are led away
from directing our thought according to the facts, at least as these
facts have found their way to us through tradition. Anyone who
examines without bias the traditional records — disregarding
all opinions offered by Church Councils and Fathers and so on —
will not fail to recognise one fact: Jesus of Nazareth cannot be
called an Adept.

Where in tradition
do we find anything which allows us to apply to Jesus of Nazareth the
concept of the Adept as we have it in theosophical teaching? In the
first periods of Christianity one thing was emphasised: that Jesus of
Nazareth was a man like any other, a weak man like any other. And
those who uphold the saying, ‘Jesus was truly man’
understand most nearly who it was that came into the world. Thus if
we pay proper heed to the tradition, no idea of ‘Adept’
is to be found there. And if you remember all that has been said in
past lectures concerning the development of Jesus of Nazareth —
the history of the Jesus-child in whom up to his twelfth year
Zarathustra lived, and the history of the other Jesus-child in whom
Zarathustra then lived up to his thirtieth year — you will
certainly say: Here we have to do with a special man, a man for whose
existence the world's history, the world's evolution,
made the greatest preparations, evident from the fact that two human
bodies were formed, and in one of them up to the twelfth year, and in
the other from the twelfth to the thirtieth year, the
Zarathustra-individuality dwelt.

Since these two
Jesus-figures were such significant individualities, Jesus of
Nazareth certainly stands high; but not in the same way as an Adept
does, for the Adept goes forward continuously from incarnation to
incarnation. And apart from this: in the thirtieth year, when the
Christ-Individuality enters into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this
very Jesus of Nazareth forsakes his body, and from the moment of the
Baptism by John — even if we do not now speak of the Christ —
we have to do with a human being who must be designated in the truest
sense of the word as a ‘mere man’, save that he is the
bearer of the Christ. But we must distinguish between the bearer of
the Christ and the Christ Himself. Once the body which was to be the
bearer of the Christ had been forsaken by the
Zarathustra-individuality, there dwelt in it no human individuality
who had attained any specially high development. The stage of
development shown by Jesus of Nazareth sprang from the fact that the
Zarathustra-individuality dwelt in him. As we know, however, this
human nature was forsaken by the Zarathustra-individuality. Thus it
was that this human nature, directly the Christ-Individuality had
taken possession of it, brought against Him all that otherwise comes
forth from human nature — the Tempter. That is why the Christ
could go through the extremities of despair and sorrow, as shown to
us in the happenings on the Mount of Olives.

Anyone who leaves
out of account these essential points cannot come to a real knowledge
of the Being of the Christ. The Christ-bearer was truly man —
not an Adept. Recognition of this fact will open for us a first
glimpse into the whole nature of the events of Golgotha, the events
of Palestine. If we were to look upon Christ Jesus simply as a high
Adept, we should have to place Him in a line with other
Adept-natures. Some people may perhaps tell us that we do not do this
because from the very outset, owing to some preconceived idea, we
want to place Christ Jesus beyond all other Adepts, as a still higher
Adept. Those who might say this are not aware of what we have to
impart as the results of occult research in our time.

The question is not
in the very least whether the prestige of other Adepts would be
impaired. Within the world-conception to which we must adhere
according to the occult results of the present time, we know just as
well as others that there existed as a contemporary of Christ Jesus
another significant individuality whom we regard as a true Adept. And
unless we go into exact details, it is even difficult for us to
distinguish inwardly this human being from Christ Jesus, for he
really appears quite like Him. When, for instance, we hear that this
contemporary of Christ Jesus was announced before his birth by a
heavenly vision, it reminds us of the annunciation of the birth of
Jesus, as told in the Gospels. When we hear that he was not
designated merely as of human birth, but as a son of the Gods, this
reminds us again of the beginning of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
When we hear that the birth of this individuality took his mother by
surprise, so that she was overwhelmed, we are reminded of the birth
of Jesus of Nazareth, and of the events in Bethlehem, as told in the
Gospels. When we hear that the individuality grew up and surprised
all around him by his wise answers to the questions from the priests,
it reminds us of the scene of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the
Temple. When we are told that this individuality came to Rome and met
there the funeral procession of a young girl, that the procession was
brought to a halt and that he awakened the dead, we are reminded of
an awakening from the dead in the Gospel of Luke. And if we wish to
speak of miracles, numberless miracles are recorded in connection
with this individuality, who was a contemporary of Christ Jesus.
Indeed, the similarity goes so far that after the death of this
individuality he is said to have appeared to men, as Christ Jesus
appeared after His death to the disciples. And when from the
Christian side all possible reasons are brought forward either to
depreciate this being or to deny altogether his historical existence,
this is no less ingenious than what is said against the historical
existence of Christ Jesus Himself. The individuality in question is
Apollonius of Tyana, and of him we speak as a really high Adept.

If we now ask about
the essential difference between the Christ Jesus event and the
Apollonius event, we must be clear what the important point in the
Apollonius event is.

Apollonius of Tyana is an individuality who went through many incarnations;
he won for himself high powers and reached a certain climax in his
incarnation at the beginning of our era. Hence the individual we are
considering is he who lived in the body of Apollonius of Tyana and
had therein his earthly field of action. It is with him that we are
concerned. Now we know that a human individuality takes part in the
building up of his earthly body. Hence we must say: the body of this
individuality was built up by him to a certain form for his own
particular use. This we cannot say of Christ Jesus. In the thirtieth
year of Jesus of Nazareth the Christ came into the physical body,
etheric body, and astral body of Jesus; hence He had not himself
built up this body from childhood. The relationship between the
Christ-Individuality and this body is quite different from that
between the Apollonius-individuality and his body. When in the spirit
we turn our gaze to Apollonius of Tyana, we say: ‘It is the
concern of this individuality, and his concern plays itself out as
the life of Apollonius of Tyana.’ If we want to represent in a
diagram a life-course of this kind, we can do it like this:

Diagram 1Click image for large view

Let the continuous
individuality be shown by the horizontal line; then we have in (a) a
first incarnation, in (b) a life between death and a new birth, in
(c) a second incarnation followed again by (d) a life between death
and a new birth, then a third incarnation, (e) and so on. That which
passes through all these incarnations — the human individuality
— is like a thread of human life, independent of the sheaths of
the astral body, etheric body and physical body, and also, between
death and a new birth, independent of those parts of the etheric body
and astral body which remain behind. Thus the life-thread is always
separated from the external Cosmos.

Diagram 2Click image for large view

If we want to represent the nature of the Christ-life, we must draw it
otherwise. When we consider the preceding incarnations of Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christ-life certainly develops in a certain way. But
when we draw the life-thread, we have to show that in the thirtieth
year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth the individuality forsakes this
body, so that from now onwards we have only the sheaths of physical
body, etheric body and astral body.

The forces which the
individuality develops, however, are not in the external sheaths.
They lie in the life-thread of the Ego, which goes from incarnation
to incarnation. Thus the forces which belonged to the
Zarathustra-individuality, and were present in the body of Jesus of
Nazareth, preparing that body, pass out with the
Zarathustra-individuality. Hence the sheaths which remain are a
normal human organism, not in any sense the organism of an Adept, but
the organism of a simple man, a weak man. And now the objective event
occurs: whereas in other cases the life-thread simply goes farther,
as in (a) and (b), it now turns along a side path (c); for through
the Baptism by John in Jordan the Christ-Being entered into the
threefold organism. In this organism the Christ-Being lived from the
Baptism until the thirty-third year, until the Event of Golgotha, as
we have often described.

Whose concern, then,
is the life of Christ Jesus from the thirtieth to the thirty-third
year? It is not the concern of the individuality who went from
incarnation to incarnation, but of that Individuality who from out of
the Cosmos entered into the body of Jesus of Nazareth; the concern of
an Individuality, a Being who was never before connected with the
earth, who from out of the Universe connected Himself with a human
body. In this sense the event which took place between the thirtieth
and thirty-third years of the life of Christ Jesus, between the
John-Baptism and the Mystery of Golgotha, are those of the Divine
Being, Christ, not of a man. Hence this event was not a concern of
the earth but a concern of the super-sensible worlds, for it had
nothing to do with a man. As a sign of this — that it had to do
with no man — the human being who had dwelt in this body up to
the thirtieth year forsook it.

These happenings
have originally something to do with events that took place before
such a life-thread as our human one had passed into a physical human
organization. We must go back to the ancient Lemurian time, into the
age wherein human individualities, coming from Divine heights,
incarnated for the first time in earthly bodies; back to the event
which is indicated for us in the Old Testament as the Temptation
through the Serpent. This event is of a very remarkable kind. From
its outcome all men suffer as long as they are subject to
incarnation. For if this event had not happened, the whole evolution
of mankind on the earth would have been different, and men would have
passed in a much more perfect condition from incarnation to
incarnation. Through this event, however, they become more closely
entangled in matter, allegorically designated as the ‘Fall of
Man’. But it was the Fall that first called man to his present
individuality; so that, as he goes as an individuality from
incarnation to incarnation, he is not responsible for the Fall. We
know that the Luciferic spirits were responsible for the Fall. Hence
we must say that before man became man in the earthly sense, there
occurred the divine, super-sensible event by which a deeper
entanglement in matter was laid upon him. Through this event man has
indeed attained to the power of love and to freedom, but through it
something was laid upon him that he could not lay upon himself by his
own power. This becoming entangled in matter was not a human act, but
a deed of the Gods, which happened before men could cooperate in
their own fate. It is something which the Higher Powers of
progressive evolution arranged with the Luciferic powers. We shall
have to go into all these events and characterise them more exactly.
Today we will place only the chief point before our minds.

What happened at
that time needed a counterpoise. The pre-human event — the Fall
of Man — needed a counterpoise, but this again was a concern
not of human beings, but of the Gods among themselves. And we shall
see that this action had to take its course as deeply in matter as
the first action had taken place above it. The God had to descend as
deeply into matter as He had allowed man to sink into matter.

Let this fact work
upon you with its full weight; then you will understand that this
incarnation of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth was something that
concerned Christ Himself. And what part was man called upon to take
in it? First of all, as spectator, to see how the God compensates for
the Fall, how He provides the compensating act. It would not have
been possible to do this within the personality of an Adept, for an
Adept is one who by his own efforts has worked his way out of the
Fall. It was possible only in a personality who was truly man —
who, as man, did not surpass other men. This personality had
surpassed them before he was thirty years of age — but no
longer. Through that which then took place, a Divine event was
accomplished in the evolution of mankind, just as had been done at
the beginning of human evolution in the Lemurian time. And men were
partakers in a transaction which had taken place among Gods; men
could look upon it, because the Gods had to make use of the world of
the physical plane in order to let their transaction play itself out
to the end. Hence it is much better to say: ‘Christ offered to
the Gods the atonement which He could offer only in a physical human
body’, than to use any other form of words. Man was a spectator
of a Divine occasion.

Through this
atonement something had happened for human nature. Men simply
experienced it in the course of their development. Thereby the third
way was opened, besides the two already indicated.

Men who have gone
deeply into the nature of Christianity have often pointed out these
three ways. From among the large number of those who could be named I
will mention only two who have given eminent testimony to the fact
that Christ — who from the twentieth century onwards will be
seen through the more highly developed faculties — can be
recognised, felt, experienced, through feelings which were not
possible in the same form before the Event of Golgotha.

There is, for
example, a man who in his whole cast of mind can be looked upon as a
sharp opponent of what we have characterised as Jesuitism: Blaise
Pascal, a great figure in spiritual history, standing forth as one
who has set aside all that had arisen to the detriment of the old
Churches, but has also absorbed nothing of modern rationalism. As
always with great minds, he really remained alone with his thoughts.
But what is the fundamental feature of his thinking at the beginning
of the modern period? When we look into the matter we see from the
writings he left behind, particularly from his inspiring Pensées
— a book accessible to anyone — how he perceived and felt
what man must have become if the Christ-Event had not taken place in
the world.

In the secrecy of
his soul, Pascal set himself the question: What would have become of
man if no Christ had entered into human evolution? And he replied: We
can feel that in his soul man encounters two dangers. One danger is
that he should recognise God as identical with his own being:
knowledge of God in knowledge of man. Whither does this lead? When it
arises so that man recognises himself as God, it leads to pride,
haughtiness, arrogance; and man destroys his best powers because he
hardens them in haughtiness and pride. This is a knowledge of God
that would always have been possible, even if no Christ had come,
even if the Christ-Event had not worked as an impulse in the hearts
of all men. Human beings would always have been able to recognize
God, but they would have become proud through this consciousness in
their own breasts. Or there might be human beings who hide themselves
from the knowledge of God, who want to know nothing about God. Their
gaze falls on something else; it falls on human powerlessness, on
human misery, and then of necessity there follows human despair. That
would have been the other danger, the danger of those who had put
away from them the knowledge of God.

Only these two ways,
said Pascal, are possible: pride and arrogance, or despair. Then the
Christ-Event entered into human evolution, and worked so that every
man received a power which not only enabled him to experience God,
but the very God who had become like unto men, who had lived with
men. That is the sole remedy for pride: when we turn our gaze upon
the God who bowed Himself to the Cross; when the soul looks to Christ
bowing Himself to death on the Cross. And that, too, is the only
healing for despair. For this is not a humility that makes a man
weak, but a humility that gives healing strength which transcends
despair. As the mediator between pride and despair, there dawns in
the human soul the Helper, the Saviour, as Pascal understood Him.
This can be felt by every man, even without clairvoyance. This is the
preparation for the Christ who from the twentieth century onwards
will be visible for all men; who as the Healer for pride and despair
will arise in every human breast, but earlier could not be felt in
the same way.

The second witness I
would summon from the long line of men who have this feeling, a
feeling that every Christian can make his own, is one already
mentioned in many other connections, Vladimir Soloviev. Soloviev also
points to two powers in human nature, between which the personal
Christ must stand as a mediator. There is a duality, he says, for
which the human soul longs: immortality, and wisdom or moral
perfection; but neither belongs to human nature from the start. Human
nature shares the characteristic of all natures, and nature leads not
to immortality, but to death. In beautiful meditations this great
thinker of modern times works out how external science shows that
death extends over everything. If we look at external nature, our
knowledge replies, ‘Death is!’ But within us lives the
longing for immortality. Why? Because of our longing for perfection.
We have only to glance into the human soul to see that a longing for
perfection lives in us. Just as truly, says Soloviev, as the red rose
is endowed with red colour, so truly is the human soul endowed with
the longing for perfection. But to strive after perfection without
longing for immortality, he continues, is to give the lie to
existence. It would be meaningless if the soul were to end with
death, as all natural being ends. Yet all natural existence tells us,
‘Death is!’ Hence the human soul is under the necessity
of going beyond natural existence and seeking the answer elsewhere.

Proceeding from this
thought, Soloviev says: Look at the natural scientists, what answer
do they give when they wish to teach the connection of the human soul
with nature? A mechanical natural order, they say, prevails and man
is part of it. And what do the philosophers answer? That the
spiritual, meaning an empty abstract thought-world which pervades all
the facts of nature, is to be recognised philosophically. Neither of
these statements is an answer for a man who is conscious of himself,
and asks from out of his consciousness, ‘What is perfection?’
If he is conscious that he has a longing for perfection, a longing
for the life of truth, if he asks what Power can satisfy this
longing, there opens for him an outlook into a realm, the realm of
Grace over and above nature, which at first stands before the soul as
a riddle; and unless the answer to it can be found, the soul is
constrained to regard itself as a falsehood. No philosophy, no
natural science, can connect the realm of Grace with existence, for
natural forces work mechanically, and thought-powers have only
thought-reality. But what is it that is able, with full reality, to
unite the soul with nature? He Who is the personal Christ working in
the world. And only the living Christ, not one that is merely thought
of, can give the answer. Anything that works merely in the soul
leaves the soul alone, for the soul cannot of itself give birth to
the kingdom of Grace. That which transcends nature, which like nature
itself stands there as a real fact, the personal historic Christ —
He it is who gives not an intellectual answer but a real answer.

And now Soloviev
comes to the most complete, the most fully spiritual answer that can
be given at the end of the period now closing, before the doors open
to that which has so often been intimated to you: the vision of
Christ which will have its beginning in the twentieth century. In the
light of these facts, a name can be given to the consciousness which
Pascal and Soloviev have so memorably described: we can call it
Faith. So, too, it has been named by others.

With the concept of
Faith we can come from two directions into a strange conflict
regarding the human soul. Go through the evolution of the concept of
Faith and see what the critics have said about it. Today men are so
far advanced that they say Faith must be guided by knowledge, and a
Faith not supported by knowledge must be put aside. Faith must be
dethroned, as it were, and replaced by knowledge. In the Middle Ages
the things of the Higher Worlds were apprehended by Faith, and Faith
was held to be justified on its own account.

The fundamental
principle of Protestantism, also, is that Faith, alongside knowledge,
is to be looked upon as justified. Faith is something which goes
forth from the human soul, and alongside of it is the knowledge which
ought to be common to all. It is interesting to see how Kant, whom
many consider a great philosopher, did not get beyond this concept of
Faith. His idea is that what a man should attain concerning such
matters as God, immortality and so forth, ought to shine in from
quite other regions, but only through a moral faith, not through
knowledge.

The highest
development of the concept of Faith comes with Soloviev, who stands
before the closed door as the most significant thinker of his time,
pointing already to the modern world. For Soloviev knows a Faith
quite different from all previous concepts of it. Whither has the
prevailing concept of Faith led humanity? It has brought humanity to
the atheistic, materialistic demand for mere knowledge of the
external world, in line with Lutheran and Kantian ideas, or in the
sense of the Monistic philosophy of the nineteenth century; to the
demand for the knowledge which boasts of knowledge, and considers
Faith as something that the human soul had framed for itself out of
its necessary weakness up to a certain time in the past. The concept
of Faith has finally come to this, because Faith was regarded as
merely subjective. In the preceding centuries Faith had been demanded
as a necessity. In the nineteenth century Faith is attacked just
because it finds itself in opposition to the universally valid
knowledge which should stem from the human soul.

And then comes a
philosopher who recognises and prizes the concept Faith in order to
attain a relationship to Christ that had not previously been
possible. He sees this Faith, in so far as it relates to Christ, as
an act of necessity, of inner duty.

For with Soloviev
the question is not, ‘to believe or not to believe’;
Faith is for him a necessity in itself. His view is that we have a
duty to believe in Christ, for otherwise we paralyse ourselves and
give the lie to our existence. As the crystal form emerges in a
mineral substance, so does Faith arise in the human soul as something
natural to itself. Hence the soul must say: ‘If I recognise the
truth, and not a lie about myself, then in my own soul I must realise
Faith. Faith is a duty laid upon me, but I cannot do otherwise than
come to it through my own free act.’ And therein Soloviev sees
the distinctive mark of the Christ-Deed, that Faith is both a
necessity and at the same time a morally free act. It is as though it
were said to the soul: You can do nothing else. If you do not wish to
extinguish the self within you, you must acquire Faith for yourself;
but it must be by your own free act! And, like Pascal, Soloviev
brings that which the soul experiences, in order not to feel itself a
lie, into connection with the historic Christ Jesus as He entered
into human evolution through the events in Palestine. Because of
this, Soloviev says: If Christ had not entered into human evolution,
so that He has to be thought of as the historic Christ; if He had not
brought it about that the soul perceives the inwardly free act as
much as the lawful necessity of Faith, the human soul in our
post-Christian times would feel itself bound to extinguish itself and
to say, not ‘I am’, but ‘I am not’. That,
according to this philosopher, would have been the course of
evolution in post-Christian times: an inner consciousness would have
permeated the human soul with the ‘I am not’. (Cf.
Carlyle's famous account in Sartor Resartus, Book II, Chapter
VII, of his encounter with a repudiation of the ‘Everlasting
No’. (Translator's note.)) Directly
the soul pulls itself together to the point of attributing real
existence to itself, it cannot do otherwise than turn back to the
historic Christ Jesus.

Here we have, for
exoteric thought also, a step forward along the path of Faith in
establishing the third way. Through the message of the Gospels, a
person not able to look into the spiritual world can come to
recognition of Christ. Through that which the consciousness of the
seer can impart to him, he can likewise come to a recognition of the
Christ. But there was also a third way, the way of self-knowledge,
and as the witnesses cited, together with thousands and thousands of
other human beings, can testify from their own experience, it leads
to a recognition that self-knowledge in post-Christian time is
impossible without placing Christ Jesus by the side of man and a
corresponding recognition that the soul must either deny itself, or,
if it wills to affirm itself, it must at the same time affirm Christ
Jesus.

Why this was not so
in pre-Christian times will be shown in the next few days.